Winter Olympics: Why Beijing 2022 promises the most progressive snowboarding ever seen

One thing is certain in my mind — this will be the most hotly contested Olympic Games yet for snowboarding — and promises some of the most progressive action ever seen.

That's a huge claim, especially considering the battle that took place for the men's halfpipe medals four years ago in Pyeongchang.

Many people thought that epic contest, which saw Japan's Ayumu Hirano, Australia's Scotty James and American Shaun White pushed way beyond their comfort zones, would never be bettered.

How wrong they were. If anything, in 2022 the stakes are even higher.

So let's start with the men's halfpipe. Instead of just three names battling it out for medals this time, we now have six.

White is now 35. In action sports terms that is positively Jurassic and yet he is still capable of making the podium at any contest he enters. With a new coach and more relaxed mindset he looks, for the first time, to be enjoying his snowboarding.

It's no longer a win-at-all costs battle in which losing is absolutely unacceptable — but winning will be a huge ask for the three-time Olympic gold medallist.

The Japanese are the superpower of superpipe riding. Three of the six riders in the running for medals hail from the land of the rising sun and they are incredibly good. Hirano was 15 when he won his first Olympic silver medal in 2014 and he had to settle for silver again in Pyeongchang.

He is determined not to settle for silver a third time and to ensure that, he broke the seal on the triple cork in training in October. He then became the first man to land it in competition in December.

This terrifying trick sees the rider spin 1,440 degrees on the horizontal axis whilst corkscrewing the rotation, so the head dips under the board three times.

This is where it